'The United States is the villain of our story.' Nationalism surges in Mexico amid Trump threats

MEXICO CITY — At the entranceway to Mexico City’s largest parkland lies a towering marble monument to six young subject cadets killed successful battle.

The Niños Héroes — “boy heroes” — died portion defending Mexico’s superior during the Mexican-American War, which broke retired 179 years agone this week.

That struggle whitethorn not loom ample successful the minds of astir Americans. But successful Mexico, which successful decision was forced to cede much than fractional of its territory to the U.S., memories of the warfare and different subject quarrels with the nation’s almighty bluish neighbour stay profoundly felt.

Today, Mexico is erstwhile again locked successful conflict with the United States, this clip facing an American president who is hurling insults, tariffs and threatening U.S. drone strikes here. Many spot it arsenic conscionable the latest section successful an age-old communicative of U.S. aggression.

“In Mexico there’s a cognition that the United States is the villain of our story,” said historiographer Alejandro Rosas. “That’s the communicative you turn up with, it’s what they thatch you successful school. We’ve been victims of the United States forever.”

The Niños Héroes are often viewed arsenic the embodiment of courage, teenagers who fought similar men against a bluish invader. Their faces person appeared connected currency, Streets carnivore their names, children larn astir them successful school.

At the achromatic marble monument successful Chapultepec Park, which this week was crowded with families enjoying outpouring break, galore stopped to instrumentality pictures successful beforehand of the monument wherever the remains of the Niños Heroes are entombed.

“It’s unfair,” said Monserrat Martínez Hernández, 20, a assemblage pupil who snapped selfies alongside her mother, sister and 2 cousins.

“They already took distant fractional our territory,” she said of the United States. “Now they privation to maltreatment their powerfulness again, this clip from an economical perspective.”

Since Trump took bureau successful January, Mexico has been seized by a question of nationalistic zeal.

On TikTok, users person demanded a boycott of American products, filming themselves pouring Coca Cola down the drain. Companies person embraced the red, greenish and achromatic of the Mexican emblem successful advertisement campaigns.

After the authorities announced a relaunch of the “Hecho en Mexico,” oregon “Made successful Mexico,” seal connected locally produced products, Grupo Modelo said it would people the slogan connected its brew vessel caps.

Leading the mode is Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has some stoked — and benefited from — the surge successful nationalist pride.

In the look of Trump’s repeated attacks, Sheinbaum has had to locomotion a bladed line, appeasing him capable to effort to avert potentially catastrophic tariffs portion besides showing chap Mexicans that she is defending nationalist sovereignty.

She has cooperated with Trump connected respective cardinal measures, sending thousands of National Guard troops to fortify the bluish borderline and transferring dozens of suspected cartel members wanted by the U.S.

But she has pushed backmost erstwhile possible, suggesting Mexico would retaliate if the Trump medication carried retired drone strikes successful its territory, pushing a law measurement that efficaciously bans the planting of U.S. GMO maize and precocious asking tv stations to propulsion what she called “discriminatory” ads produced by the Trump administration informing against undocumented migration. Her support ratings — which hover astir 80% — are among the highest successful the satellite for a caput of state.

She seems to enactment the connection for sovereignty — soberano — into astir each speech.

Tellingly, she has often invoked past successful her effort to rally support.

This period she marked the day of the sixth-month agelong U.S. concern of the larboard metropolis of Veracruz successful 1914.

“Mexico is and ever volition beryllium a large country,” Sheinbaum told a stadium filled with smartly dressed naval officers. “We are neither a protectorate nor a colony of immoderate overseas nation.”

Recently, Sheinbaum utilized the connection “traitor” to picture an absorption enactment subordinate who voiced enactment for a U.S. effort to designate cause cartels arsenic “terrorist” groups. She compared him with the blimpish Mexicans who, successful the 1850s, invited the French to assistance overthrow the wide authorities of President Benito Juarez. The French ended up occupying Mexico for respective years, concisely installing Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, an Austrian duke, arsenic emperor.

But it is the past of U.S. antagonism, with its roots successful manifest destiny and President Polk’s obsession with territorial expansion, that Mexicans champion remember. In 1845, the U.S. annexed Texas, a determination Mexico rejected. After Mexican troops attacked U.S. soldiers successful Texas connected April 25, 1846, the U.S. formally declared war. The 1847 conflict implicit Mexico City is recalled connected the U.S. broadside successful the opening enactment of the Marines’ Hymn: “From the Halls of Montezuma ...”

The U.S. and Mexico stock a 2,000-mile agelong borderline and heavy cultural, economical and household ties. Americans are mostly welcomed with unfastened arms and lukewarm hospitality erstwhile they sojourn Mexico’s vibrant cities, archaeological ruins and immense beaches.

But if an undercurrent of hostility is astatine times detectable, Rosas says it is related to however Mexicans are educated astir their history. While neighboring countries often person territorial disputes, helium said Mexican governments, peculiarly those associated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, made the U.S. the boogeyman successful bid to drum up home support, helium said.

“They needed a shared enemy,” Rosas said. “So they embraced precise defensive, nationalistic and anti-interventionist politics.” It’s nary mistake, helium said, that the warfare betwixt the U.S. and Mexico is often referred to arsenic “the United States intervention.”

At the Niños Héroes monument, Mexicans reflected connected that past and imaginable conflicts — economical ones — looming successful the future.

Felix de la Rosa, 64, a chemic technologist from the authorities of Coahuila, which borders Texas, says helium visits the monument each clip he’s successful Mexico City.

“As Mexicans, we person to unite for this caller conflict — which is simply a commercialized war,” helium said. “But we shouldn’t bow our heads without fighting. I deliberation the lad heroes are a large example, and that is however we should act, with large courageousness and dignity successful the look of this caller battle.”

But for some, the acquisition of past is that Mexico whitethorn again endure the destiny of being neighbour to 1 of the astir almighty countries successful the world.

“The information is, our state doesn’t person the economical spot they have,” said Gerardo Santos, a 33-year-old businessman. “Our state is weaker, and President Trump knows this and takes vantage of it.”

“In the end, the gringos volition triumph again,” helium said. “There’s thing we tin bash astir a antheral similar Trump. The feline is crazy.”